Arburg co-operation helps protect healthcare personnel

The Corona crisis has made one thing clear: European companies are showing solidarity. German plastics machinery manufacturer Arburg, Swiss specialty chemicals group Ems-Chemie, and German safety eyewear manufacturer Uvex have been thinking about how they can provide quick help to key services.

Arburg co-operation helps protect healthcare personnel

Brille, UVEX, transparent, Marcus Krüger, Logo, EMS

The answer came in the form of protective goggles production for specialist personnel.

Dr Thomas Walther, Head of Application Technology at Arburg, received a call for help from a doctor at the hospital in Rottweil after hearing that Arburg had produced protective goggles at K 2019. Walther passed this request directly to Gerhard Böhm, Managing Director of Sales, who is already involved in various regional aid initiatives and has also initiated several brainstorming projects of this kind within the company.

Both quickly agreed that help could be provided immediately. That's how the ‘protective goggles’ project started.

Böhm said: "Whatever we can do in the current situation to help with our knowhow and our capacities as one of the world's largest manufacturers of plastics processing machines, we will put it into action quickly."

It quickly became clear that with some co-ordination measures between the three companies, these articles could be produced at Arburg in relevant quantities and with relatively little effort. It was therefore logical that the production of an initial batch of 20,000 should begin as quickly as possible.

Böhm added: "Because all three partners know what plastics can do, especially in medical technology. With our campaign, we are making sure that arising bottlenecks are immediately remedied. And this is for the benefit of many of the helpers who are now particularly important."

At the plastics trade fair K 2019 in Düsseldorf in October, Arburg demonstrated, together with the eyewear manufacturer Uvex and the material manufacturer Ems-Chemie, the fully automated production of sunglasses. Due to the unbureaucratic co-ordination between the parties, it was quickly decided that the already very dense sunglasses could be transformed into protective goggles, using the same tools and the same design. From there, everything went quickly. After Ems had agreed to the use of the tools and Uvex was willing to make the goggles, Arburg set up the production system with a removal robot in the new training centre in Lossburg.